TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE II

269. TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE (II- 'won't that be the day'):

And oh baby thy namesake is golden - swimming thirteen laps already in that sad sad ocean of doom - and have you heard all the cats just talking and talking - be-bop diddly-wop - while they played horns and they crooned 'oh the black man's in the alley again and I can hear my mama just saying 'when' as she sneaks out the backporch door' but the small piece of paper the workman left me said nothing when I read it but this: 'leave open the final opportunity - for chance will never come your way again' and I took it to the gypsy who couldn't read a thing but said instead she'd 'never seen a such as this before' and lit a candle and I left holding the bag she'd given me : the low black car along 23rd had just stopped near the Chelsea Hotel and a wild Winter storm was coming - the frothy Hudson was waved and twisted over and over again upon itself : and here it was ALREADY 1968 so so dawning : two guys had gotten out and then a third who swaddled some woman in a big thick coat and together swiftly they all went into the lobby and sweltered a moment in that way-too-hot heat only a lobby can give and they disappeared to where I knew not and the girl whom I knew only as Marney had just settled down in her chair so I sat next to her to start this conversation and she smiled delightedly and said 'let's go upstairs' by which she meant New Year's Eve was approaching or had just passed (I can't remember) and once we got there she gave me a small package wrapped in paper and told me to open it - so I did - and what it was was a photo in a small book - a photo of Pablo Picasso kissing her hand - and she said she wished for me to have this but just for ONE year and I had to give it back IF I TOOK IT this very same night a year from now - she'd gotten it in Malaga when Picasso was there - she spend three or four days with him and his wife in the stucco-white atelier they were staying in - fame might have had its perks but I couldn't yet figure where she fit in : and I agreed to all that and we had a glass of wine and soon after I left with the photo and the book (a miniature Inferno) and I stayed intent for a real long time on seeing her again the very next year - to give it all back or just to see her - but as it turned out I saw her lots of times until about August - when she disappeared and that was the end of that and the photo ended up FORGOTTEN and forlorn somewhere to this day unknown BUT when and if I ever turn it up again WON'T THAT BE THE DAY!
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They made you partake of something you didn't understand or share feelings for they made you a parfait of the elements of swank - in their thinking - while you were used to gnawing on tar they underscored your alignment with rightness by saddling you with depth and meaning unlike the reality you brushed through they made you listen to the noises of steam in a carriage-house of dread while you were used to fast light at the edges of travel - places where things compress and draw back into themselves and solidify and gain mass before disappearing BUT 'once the orphan always the waif' as the Sisters of Mercy said so you went along not willingly but along nonetheless and they threw marbles back at your face and the sting-marks of rebuke left small welts not yet healed and your place at their table was taken over by a bear who did tricks for a master and the dances of wizards seemed broken by the factory-light of some pale yellow fire and the death-defying gorge from which some sacred river roared seemed deeper and rockier than ever before but the highlands - you knew - always have lakes which then drain to the lowlands and that was the one noise you heard - the thrust of the minions of three-thousand sickening faces looking up the swamp of iniquity where the piled-up people built their villages and towns - fens of diversion malodorous buckets of scum swamps and perverted valleys with hangmen seeking trees for a noose to be placed on perfect fat limbs : there was no succor nor solace in what was left after any of this but you withstood it all nonetheless.

READING THE MATCHBOOK COVERS

268. READING THE MATCHBOOK COVERS:

"Men are all alike and so are all their Gods – I found that out a long time ago – all that vengeance and anger violence and retribution and the killing of the masses that goes with it all and I never know why but the only thing I’ve ever gotten from this stupid world is sadness – the sadness that comes with it : that absolutist bullshit crap about men killing men for a cause and men taking it upon themselves to rule over others with the solid stipulations of rightness AND righteousness too and the straight-line direct message from the Gods stuff by which we apparently murder and maim each other and it’s all a direct link to stupidity and madness nothing else : I’ve been sickened over time and over again by things I’ve seen and heard : the stupid Spaniards who put a bull in a bullring – first unloading him blindfolded from the rear of a truck – after dousing his horns with gasoline and then setting him free after the horns have been lit into flames – stupid sucking bastards these famed Christians are – and then cheering as they watch the bull rave and rant to its death in some forlorn corner of the arena – WHAT PRIDE’S IN THAT for a God OR His creation you’d have to tell me that – or the American Appalachian hunters who select the dog with the least succesful treeings for the afternoon and hang him from a tree in glee and I’m sickened by the sadness around me : animals like corpses along decimated highways left to die and rot after being massacred by cars and the time a thousand small frogs in some post-rainstorm frenzy were crossing Route 6 at dusk right by the ‘Camptown Races’ Stephen Foster sign by Wyalusing Rocks and the cars going by just ran them over by the hundreds – smashed frogs and guts all over the roadway – what kind of God would forget this stuff in the equation and not kill off Mankind – if even as merely a gesture of His own righteousness about His own work : how can this be accepted how can any source of justice be found coming from a mess such as this - meandering millions of evil idiots crawling and crowding over the very globe they’re ruining and NOT A WORD BACK in either direction for this God or that God nowhere and Mankind in its eyes harbors resentment and hatred and cannot then fathom its own reasons why RUINATION is its wont REVOLUTION its aberration as the thunder roils and rolls overhead the great pealing of perfection breaking back over itself and every God story has its own ending : while we ‘wait’ for Salvation (again) or fire up the maddening guns for to make RIGHT the world in the WAYS of GOD – hang-dog message-mentor that it is – there is no meaning but rot and there is no passage but the one to DEATH and to BACK from whatever oblique blackness we once came from EMITTED like atoms spit forth atomically and clinking to the darkest sides of some magicians swift DNA – ‘we are monkeys not men and we prove it and then…’ SO I’ll mention once more – ALL men are the same and so are their Gods" and as he was talking to me I was sitting up in a chair reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius which reading he’d interrupted to tell me what he’d just told me - based I guessed on the premise that he saw that I was reading about Gods : and I might as well have been since they were all alike – Pagan Animistic or Religious doesn’t matter – and I wanted to harken back to where I’d been and tell him I’d been there and visited and seen and lived the times KNOWING FULL WELL that all it would do would be to certify back to him and confirm that he was right in his meager and raging opinion but WHAT HAD I TO WAGER no sum worth anything : and the thunder overhead pealed again and the thin stick of lightning jagged lit its jagged way down ‘God’s saber this ? God’s diminishing sword?’ I questioned myself : "for Pete’s sake" I said to him "why don’t you stop your harrowing outrage and get down to business here anyway – like what the matter really is is you’ve got nothing to do and too much time to do it in so your brain is breaking things down way too much : people don’t give a shit about that stuff – if they’re told to ‘live like this’ they do it and if they’re told to ‘go to church’ they do it or repent or pray and seek the God of their likeness – notice I said likeness not choice – why is it every man’s God in the end comes out looking just as they do anyway ? which is to say as sadly humanoid as possible?" and my point was (even though no one was listening) fairly much the same as his had been : Mankind are dolts the message is sadness and ALL THINGS LIKE THIS DO PASS AWAY - - (but hell I said to myself I could have read all that on a matchbook cover for what it all was worth)….

SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED

267. SOMETHING LIKE THIS SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED (a story of misunderstanding; 1998):

There are moments when conversation stops all time and the only recourse one has is to listen and review - like the cowbells coming across the field - tolling deftly from the neck of every cow leftover lame vital and what-not - and a part of us each knows that reality is real while another part recognizes the fact of its fiction and its subjectivity within all the made-up attributes of a sad and sorry life : the guy with the hunched shoulder rolling down the street with a bag filled with debris - light or weightless things he's picked up from along the way to try and redeem for small change as if already the misinterpretation of redemption can work in his favor or be put to use for his benefit : we pile on meanings one after the other and as wrong as they get to be so the deeper they're piled - skylights and mass parades - thousands of fools out on the street with a regular and unceasing levity yelling and screaming and laughing for something else - lines and acres of girls in small shirts at the curb with all their boys and boyfriends - a gaggle of serfs - hanging drunk at their necks and the color guard of police and fire and mayors and priests walks by with their canes and brittle thoughts and wheelchairs and harbingers of things to come : death riots and fires for sure : and EVERY man at EVERY moment is making his or her own pure unfettered eternal and unceasing definition about all things - "And Jacob once the tomb was empty what else was there to do except believe in something miraculous and the bones anyway the bones never showed up and that was the simplest thing - all the authorities had to do if they wanted to stop this crazed band of nascent Christians was to produce some bones - in fact ANY BONES would have done - and disprove in their way the occurrence of which everyone spoke but nothing like that ever happened nothing of the sort occurred and they let it all keep running on and eventually PERFECTLY it fell into place into something and neither lions nor martyrdom nor slayings and killings and ostracism and outlawing could put a stop to it as it grew fingers and added doctrines and made its rules and credos and new beliefs over old beliefs and before it was too far on the everything about it had become everything else and political power and secular rule became its order of the day but JACOB again NONE of that would have happened if they didn't will it to and that's the run of the world today - that's what we're left with the remnants of all which occurred and every offshoot from that which still exists today is what we're still fighting over and there will be no loving end to anything of this sort but any fool who fights for God is fighting for a DEFINITION alone - that and nothing more can you understand that Jacob?" and Jacob said "why do you believe everything you read and what if it never happened like that ? what if this was all made up in say 719 and they added AD to it for credibility and the entire back-story of all mankind can be adduced to be fictitious and without any basis in reality - have you ever considered that - and perhaps you're nothing more than - as all of us - a captive complete and total to whatever they've told you occurred" : it was an endless story and the push and pull of all things is what kept us alive - now I won't go on to say this conversation was something I wanted to listen to ad infinitum BUT it was interesting enough and these people were characters in the way that fiction makes characters who embody concepts which the story needed and that's probably just as artificial as anything else since - using myself as an example - whatever I was told when I was young I've since later found out was wrong incorrect lies and crap the stuff like 'statesmen never lie cops are your friends the priest will help you do this for your own good' and a million more things I've wrestled with mentally but never talked over and (as I recall) the last friendly conversation I had with my father was as I drove him home from another of his problems and all the way home he talked about the moon and everything about the moon and who'd been there already and who really made it there first and what the Russians (he called them Russians not Soviets) were planning to do and it all made little sense to me because I didn't view the moon in his terms - as if it was some form of political real estate that someone had to inhabit just to show who was boss - and the entire framework of that thinking and that thought was bogged down in nothingness and we never got anywhere with that one : but anyway I'd have rather talked with him IF I HAD TO about the beauty of its light and the odd regularity of its passage and waxings and wanings and what it all meant for those before us and the eons of time it was seen from the sea by sailors with nothing else to do or see.

THE THIRTEENTH OPTION - Living Through the Depression

266. THE THIRTEENTH OPTION - Living Through the Depression:

And thus the gentlemen of the jury took their seats and the others arrived – those who would watch and comment and criticize – and then the judge himself came in and sat down on the big royal elevation but just as he did so the chair itself creaked and broke and the lower leg twisted itself out and deposited the judge upon the floor by which time a messenger had arrived bearing papers from a notary which attested to the fact that the manufacture of that chair was already suspect but by then the judge had reasserted himself forward and slain the two guards who’d allowed this to happen and as beleaguered as everyone was - for fear is a great leveler and evidently no one really wishes to die - the room was abuzz with crickets and wallflowers and the old woman who had walked up from the basement was relating the story of the estate sale from Saturday at which an ancient man had come in asking far too many questions of the house and time and home and possessions and he walked away purchasing nothing and that had made everyone suspect of his motives and "WHEW! was he strange!" she’d said and "all we were trying to do was help out the Marsden family which was in some hard times after Helen died and by selling the old house and all she’d once had they were getting some financial savvy into their lives and even the grown kids were happy – even though Helen was dead – because they’d been able each to take their own favorite things and photos and mementos for themselves so that anyone else traipsing through the house wouldn’t matter to them" and just then the judge arose and said "I still profess that you all were trespassing and had no real business in that place for in reality it was not yours and never had been but for this moment we’ll let that pass" and he sat back down with a big pass of air and it was actually that pass of air which had gotten my interest but again he started professing something sonorously like a judge in the true modern sense of the word "I am not an impartial observer here you see and never have been for there was a time when I was deeply in love with Helen and she with me so I must take objection to this course of events and they say that Justice is blind but let me tell you it’s a false blindness which is caused by nothing more than – if you’ve never noticed – the blindfold upon her eyes which is processed and put in place by enemies of the court and they seem to feel that if you convince enough people of your impartiality and blamelessness then that will simply make it so but it never does and the entire thing is a pack of lies and actually I’VE HAD IT I’m done I quit I’m leaving this bench!" and with that he left the chambers and was never heard from again not even in the annals of legendary justice or any of Albee’s plays or anything of that nature and since that time – and probably because of it – it has became really boring to just hang around - and so everyone then left one at a time singly or in clumps but I REALLY HADN’T NOTICED.

BIG TIME JAZZ-BOOKING STORY

265. BIG TIME JAZZ-BOOKING STORY - 'you can stay with uncertainty a really long time' (nyc, Nov. 1968):

Terpsichords and violins together made the sound of an unusual jazz ensemble tapping sounds on tipcloths and bottlecaps - it was almost as if right then at that time there was 'time' being made - cool guys on platforms wearing tophats and blowing tight horns while their feet kept time and the bodies swayed and in the background a wild drummer interspersed their time and rhythm with his own time amidst a wild staccato beat broken only by moments piled upon moments and no words could suffice ever to break in through the haze of sound and the cacophonous ride of scale with music : out front and lounging along the few tables and chairs nearby were half-wasted people with twisted faces looking up just to watch what was happening and maybe getting it maybe not but in either case present for the execution so to speak and even though this was but a final rehearsal they listened and the real playdate was that night - a few late sets rolling way into the wee hours but everyone was already set : one time I was on the street while the trucks lumbered by - delivery guys and freight-loads coming and going - and it was a lame mid-afternoon day in a cold grey late winter climate and everyone seemed tired of the cold tired of coats and tired of just being but it was that time of year too when a person knows things are about to change and the body can sense the new light and absorb somehow the new temperature and movement of the very air so that any unsettled feelings of cold or weariness can be withstood merely by expectation and hope alone - things to come will be better than the present - I looked at the poster on the entrance-wall and realized I'd mis-read the word and that Terpsichord was the name of the ensemble playing and not really an instrument at all but also (as Terpsicore) the name of the Greek muse of choral song and dance which didn't really fit but so what maybe I'd just missed it all and some people out front were busying themselves with the back end of a big station wagon which was filled with bolts of carpet or something which they were throwing onto the pavement nearby as some Spanish guy kept taking them into the next building and this went on for a while as I watched and I wondered how and why all these people had come to be - just going about their tasks each day in such a wide-open world all these closed routines - and it was as if I saw the very future stretched before me in that I was knowing that at some point I too would have to come to terms with life in that respect - what to do with all these days and how to go about that vapid routine of living and as the things of time came by me over and over in repeated manners I sometimes thought to myself that 'anything' would have to be better than that - better than taking the place and the station amongst the haphazard rank-and-file I saw around me repeating their daily chores but I saw too that I had nothing I had no more promise to go on then did the window-washer across the way or the Spanish guy hauling carpet and even though I was for now in the advantageous position of just 'being' without connection it wasn't going to last forever but a part of me didn't want to engage just didn't wish to come up to the cruising speed needed to mesh with what was around me and I realized then that THAT was the calling of art or music or at least the finesse of sensitivity which made creative types always outsiders but realizing and coming to grips with that brought me nothing but comfort and in my way I sensed that maybe a comfort level of such a personal dimension was - in reality - the entire purpose of life anyway but NOT in the self-indulgent way of merely doing (or not) what one wanted but instead in reaching the inner achievement or attainment of personal creativity so as to make and weave the thread of one's life into a sensible form or at least some resemblance of that to those who watched (and to whom I guess it mattered) - outside the studio doorway on the third level of the building was a sign which read 'Matador Productions - Management and Booking / fine art and jazz ensembles' and believe me it sounded bigger than it was for in actuality it was merely a booking agent for 'talent' which in this sense meant jazz quartets of whatever merit which were booked around town at any of the various nightclubs and cabaret/restaurants that wanted to 'trade' on the Jazz name but were more than happy with second or third tier acts that no one really cared about and this is what I had been listening to - another set by another small groups of guys heading out for their night's gig - it was all run as usual by some chubby guy in a cheap suit and plenty of sweat and humidity named Goldsmith or Goldberg or somebody like that - usually failed perfume salesmen or sixth-grade history teachers who'd chucked one career for another but got by in both cases by doing nothing and trading off the work of others and they'd sit around and throw promises like darts and wait to see if anything stuck so that there were always people around dumb enough to believe all this crap who figured they really were on the verge of stardom and discovery by playing maybe just two more weeks at Hanley's Chop House or Trolo's Bistro and Cabaret or the Big Fixx Club or whatever - it was all the same and nothing ever mattered - they got their 30 bucks a night and they stayed late probably three or four nights in a row dicking with the chicks or getting laid easy and then they waited for the next one to do it all again and Goldsmith or whomever it was always got the big take and always talked big and got the next schedule card to fill out all over again and - yeah yeah it just went on - and these were always cheap green offices with poorly painted green or ivory colored walls and extension cords and phone lines brought in on temporary hookups - all cheap and all tacky just like Goldsmith or Goldfine or any of the rest and what I'd do was for five bucks a day was move things around or pull wires from here to there or hammer together another pedestal box for some jazz-cat to stand on and limelight his solo and once in a while I'd get to plunk away on a piano as some form of accompaniment to whatever I was hearing - no one cared and no one stopped me though I was never sent out with a job-crew or anything and I never cared but there was one time I was let out to fill a drummer's roll in a song or two while the 'drummer' was out doing whatever and twenty minutes later he was back and I was done - that was at some east-side club out by the UN in the 50's somewhere and yeah it was fun but I had no card nor license or nothing of that nature so it was on the sly anyway and yes fame and stardom like all the rest it eluded me too but I was able to stay steady and just dig the chance.